Matthew Talbert to Keynote 2016 Mudd Undergraduate Ethics Conference

By Julie ClineMarch 1, 2016

The 2016 Mudd Undergraduate Ethics Conference, with keynote address by Matthew Talbert, associate professor of philosophy, West Virginia University (WVU), will be March 5 from 12:45–4:10 p.m. and March 6 from 9 a.m.–12:10 p.m. in the Hillel House, room 101. The keynote address will be March 5 at 4:30 p.m. in the same location.

Talbert will speak on “Doing What You Think is Right.” The conference and keynote address are free and open to the public.

Talbert is the author or editor of more than 10 articles and book chapters including “The Significance of Psychopathic Wrongdoing” (ed., 2014), in “Being Amoral: Psychopathy and Moral Incapacity;” “Unwitting Wrongdoers and the Role of Moral Disagreement in Blame” (ed., 2013), in “Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility;” and “Accountability, Aliens and Psychopaths: A Reply to Shoemaker,” in Ethics (2012).

He has been at WVU since 2007 and is current chair of the WVU Philosophy Department. Previously, he was a faculty fellow researcher and lecturer in philosophy at the University of California at San Diego. Talbert’s research focuses on approaches to moral responsibility, conceptions of blameworthiness, ethics, moral psychology and philosophy of agency.

Eight students from six different schools and states will present their papers that will appear in the inaugural Mudd Journal of Ethics. The students represent Colorado, California, Minnesota, Tennessee, Virginia and Washington.

All the papers address issues arising in moral or political philosophy or ethics. Topics include the morality of economic redistribution of resources, environmental ethics, the nature of ethical value, and the legal regulation of prostitution, among others.